Windows 8 is fourth most used OS among gamers

Earlier this year before the official launch of Windows 8, several major figures in the gaming industry spoke out against Windows 8, referring to it as a disaster waiting to happen. One of the most vocal of critic’s was Valve Software’s own Gabe Newell. However, according to the recent Steam hardware survey, Windows 8 has rocketed ahead of Mac OS X in all forms to claim the fourth spot behind Windows XP, 7 and Vista.

Keep in mind that Windows 8 has only been available officially now for going on three months. 4.69% of gamers using Steam have jumped on board Windows 8, while only 3.26% are Mac users. Steam was made available for the Mac platform in 2010 so it has had a two year head-start on Microsoft’s platform. It looks like Windows 8 may not be the failure that gaming pundits have predicted it to be.

Does Windows 8 really affect gaming? I mean, will there be any game compatibility or performance issues compared to previous Windows versions?

http://www.2girls1game.com Ashley K.

Not really. The problem is that people look at the Windows Store as Microsoft trying to close their ecosystem like Apple has done with iOS, but that’s simply not happening. Windows RT has been all but a flop.

http://www.gamesobscura.com/ themizarkshow

It’s not a surprise for me… the core-gaming market likes to be on the bleeding edge of tech stuff, so when an OS updates or new devices come out, they snag them quickly.

I’ve been gaming on my Windows8 desktop for a month now, and although its barely noticeable in games, when running a game and anything else, things do go much more smoothly. Win8 seems to require either less system resources or handles multitasking a lot better than I had on Win7.